No More Diets

I’m 33 years old, 5.2” inches and weigh 75 kg (165lbs) Over the last 2 years I’ve put on 10 kg. Before that I was going to the gym but can’t go regularly any more. Can you help and guide me with what to do?

You know how easy it is to put on 5kgs (11lb) over a year?

Dead easy!

If you eat just 105 calories a day more than you use then there’s your 5kgs. That’s just a couple of apples or a milky coffee too much. And if you were exercising 3 times a week at the gym and stopped going that could explain your weight gain too.

It’s generally not the odd blow out meal or lack of marathon running which affects our weight so much as the daily cookie too many, the daily walk too few.

I’m not that fond of diets for lasting weight loss but I am very fond of gradually changing your habits so that you are eating healthier food and moving a bit more in your everyday life. That doesn’t need going to the gym. It just means climbing more stairs and taking fewer lifts or escalators. It means taking as many steps as possible rather than sitting down. It means putting more energy into everything you do. It also doesn’t mean eating rabbit food all the time but it does mean going easy on fatty or sugary foods and eating a smaller portions.

There’s such a fine line between weight gain and weight loss that just a few habits changed for the better can swing things back in the direction you want to go.

And if you decide to diet anyway - choose one you could live with (in a modified form) forever so that you are establishing long term good habits.

I have read so many diets which all propose different calorie amounts. How many calories should I be eating to lose weight?

The simplest calculation for the number of calories you need to maintain your weight is to take your weight in pounds and multiply by 12. (Remember, there are 2.2lbs in a kilogram if you weight yourself in kilos.)

If you weigh 10 stone (or 140 pounds) that’s 1680 calories daily just to stay the same.

To safely lose weight, subtract no more than about 250 calories from that and then make sure you get active to the tune of 250 calories a day. That doesn’t have to be formal exercise - it can be doing gardening, housework, cycling or walking - anything active.

This will give you a 500 calorie a day deficit, and should result in you losing about a pound a week.

Actually I’m not that fond of calorie counting because it’s too easy to underestimate the amount you are eating or to forget to add something in and too easy to overestimate the number of calories you are burning. And even if you manage to lose weight by being meticulous in your calculations, who wants to keep calorie counting forever? When you stop counting the weight piles back on.

To my mind it’s better to forget about counting calories and to train yourself to eat sensible portions of delicious healthy food and to change how you interact with food so that you have good habits and a slim body for the rest of your life - and so that’s what I teach in my 8 week weight loss coaching program.

How do I lose weight and keep it off?

Many of the questions I get asked are really about this one basic wish and answering that question in a single blog post is nigh on impossible because everyone has different circumstances, different needs, different preferences.

But everything I do as a weight loss coach centers around this question and I help people with that every day.

My philosophy is based on creating the habits which will make sure you lose weight and keep it off forever. All it needs is the motivation to start changing your habits - a bit of determination while the habits solidify and become part of your normal way of doing things and then it’s downhill all the way to success.

If you’ve been on lots of diets then you know they are not the answer (or at least not an answer for permanent weight loss). You have to keep redoing them over and over again for the rest of your life unless you change the habits that are making you fat.

If you want to know more, I have been writing about this for years online and you can read back copies of my newsletters and articles free at my sites. (See the links to Weight Loss Motivation and Simply Slimming in the column on the right - follow the links to back issues at those sites and get my free report and e-course).

I also have an online coaching program the Diet Exit Plan which is just $87 and gives you the keys to success in a solid 8 week step by step program - but if that’s out of your budget start with the free stuff - I don’t want anyone to suffer a lifetime of diet misery through lack of a few dollars.

I follow my diet exactly and I can’t seem to lose any weight. What could be wrong? (Weight watchers core and SBD)

There are a few things which could be wrong here because, normally, if you have the will power (though few of us have) to follow a diet exactly you SHOULD lose weight.

I am a bit concerned that you find it necessary to stick to two plans. Is that even possible? Assuming that SBD is South Beach Diet can these diets even work together? Why not just concentrate on one if you’re going to diet? Because as I say both have been known to work if you stick to them to the letter. (My problem with diets is that even if you stick to them while you lose weight most of us can’t or won’t stick with them forever and you just gain the weight back unless you change your habits).

The other thing I need to ask (because it’s all too easy to avoid being honest with ourselves) - are you really sticking to your diet exactly? to every dish? to every amount/portion size (by measuring not guesswork)? to every exercise session etc? A little slip here and there doesn’t seem like much but it may be the difference between losing weight and not.

But if you are following your diet exactly and not losing weight then it may be that

a) you have not got much weight to lose and so your body is resistant to weight loss - it is much harder to lose weight if you are already around the normal weight range.

b) you have been on a very low calorie diet in the past and your metabolism is sluggish as a result - this is just your body’s way of protecting itself when you try to starve it

c) you have a slow metabolism due to a medical problem such as an underactive thyroid. Best to check this out with your doctor.

Only you can really know what applies in your circumstances - once you do you can take it from there.